


No Sleep Til Brooklyn

by myystic (neoinean)



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Genre: And McClane is still "that guy", Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Immediately Post-Canon, Injury Recovery, Matt has issues, Permanent Injury Implied, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:10:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1638272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neoinean/pseuds/myystic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Picking up the pieces.  Sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Sleep Til Brooklyn

**Author's Note:**

> Written for ToraK for Yuletide 2008

In the end Matt decided it was ironic, the way his stint in the hospital wound up being a good six days longer than McClane's, but then for all that McClane had been beaten up, smacked down, blown up, and shot – _twice!_ – sixty-seven stitches and a blood transfusion later and he was back on his feet again. Well, stitches and blood and a solid forty-eight hour nap later, but still. The crazy SOB had gotten away relatively unscathed, given all they'd been through.

Bastard.

Of course, McClane's gunshot wounds had been mostly clean, for all they'd torn the shit out of his shoulder, and so he'd missed out on the fun of having his kneecap subdivided into unequal shares. 

Irony, Matt figured, or maybe it was just par for the course that he'd never even realized how bad he'd been shot. Sure it'd hurt like fuck at the time, but between the initial adrenaline rush and then the morphine haze he'd slipped into on the ambulance ride, the possibility that he'd actually wound up worse off than McClane simply hadn't occurred to him. 

His arrival at the hospital sat as little more than a disjointed blur of light and noise, dead center of the gaps in his memory – morphine's price for letting him skip out on the pain – and so the first thing Matt truly remembered (or at least thought he remembered, anyway) was blinking back to semi-awareness in a recovery suite with people yelling at him to wake up only to then turn around and tell him to go right on back to sleep again once he'd managed it. 

Some indeterminate time later they moved him to a private room, but he was still so hopped on painkillers that he barely even noticed the change of scenery. Just that he seemed to exist in a sort of fog, like there was this horrible lag between one thought and the next, like there was a loose connection somewhere in his head or maybe between his head and the rest of him – and that he itched in odd places from the starchy sheets and the harsh medical tape used to secure the myriad tubes and wires that seemed to snake all over him. When he wasn't sleeping Matt felt a bit like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, but then most of the time he slept.

In between the catatonia and the disjointed numbness of the morphine high, Matt often found Lucy sitting at his bedside, though apparently she wasn't quite as tough as she let on because he could have sworn that she had tears in her eyes as often as not. Of course, he could have _also_ sworn that his mother had stopped by to call him seven different kinds of idiot in between fluffing his pillows and demanding to know if he was eating well – and given that she'd been dead for six years Matt figured that his perceptions were circumspect at best. 

When Matt was finally both awake and lucid enough to know the difference he was confronted by an endless stream of visitors, most of whom he didn't know – either doctors in labcoats or matching sets of men in suits – who never seemed to run out of questions. They asked about his medical history and his family history and his employment history, they asked about his education and his background and his criminal record, they asked about John and Lucy and Gabriel, about what they'd done and what _he'd_ done and all sorts of worryingly specific stuff about the hacking and the algorithms and the code – and for the most part Matt was still keenly aware of just how much of an accessory he was to this whole fire sale _clusterfuck_ so he tried to answer everyone as best he could (he wasn't so far gone to think that overt cooperation _wouldn't_ go better for him) and if after that they _still_ couldn't see that he'd come down on the side of the angels - well then fuck them, anyway. McClane would put in a good word for him. (He had to, right? After everything?) 

Still, there were a lot of questions. Like, _a lot_ of questions, and sometime after the umpteenth go-round he'd taken to pretending to sleep, just to get away from the interrogation.

Not that he'd had to pretend that hard. Morphine was his new best friend.

Then the next time he awoke it was to a barrage of orthopedic surgeons bearing x-rays and consent forms. Apparently the first surgery was just an assessment – triage, they'd said; removing bone and bullet fragments – and they hadn't actually _fixed_ him yet. That was when he learned that not only had his knee been blasted into a fucking _jigsaw puzzle_ , but apparently it was one of those crazy-advanced models that came with pieces missing and had to be reassembled by a team of experts carrying lots of excess hardware. 

_Fuck_. 

Matt tried to sleep again after that, but didn't much succeed. They'd adjusted his drug cocktail as part of his pre-op prep and he felt exhausted and achy and thoroughly miserable, but that was only when he wasn't dribbling into his pillow or wondering why the clocks were running backwards - and just what the hell was he _on_ , anyway, that turned his brain into a fucking Dali landscape? Whatever it was, it left him with far too much time to think – in an abstract, groggy sort of way – which kinda sucked, considering his thoughts were not good company. If his mother could have seen him then surely she would have _thwacked_ him good and solid with her cane (from the halcyon days when the cane was all she'd needed) for worrying himself useless, but by then Matt was fairly certain he'd stopped hallucinating. 

Only fairly certain, because at one point he'd thought he might have been visited by an older woman who maybe looked kinda familiar. She'd been brisk and business-like and told him that he didn't have a thing to worry about – ironic, that – because she'd made sure they would take care of everything. Whoever the hell 'they' were. 

Holly Genaro, as Matt eventually came to learn, looked a lot like he figured Lucy might, twenty-five years or so from now, when the drugs were good enough that he didn't see a problem with wondering how Lucy might look down the road awhile. Apparently she'd been flown in special by the feds even before the airlines were up and running again - and that was _someone's_ favor, had to be. McClane seemed like a guy who hoarded good will like that - and when he'd come out of the anesthesia for real again in a different – and considerably larger – private room, there'd been a huge bouquet of flowers waiting for him on the swing table with five different phone numbers scribbled on the card: her cell, her hotel, and one for each of the team of lawyers she'd retained especially for him. 

Matt wondered at how McClane's ex-wife had enough clout to hire a law firm capable of not only tackling the feds but tackling them and _winning_ , too, if the utter lack of men in suits to haunt his recovery this time around was any indication, but the notion that someone or something could get the inquisition off his back at least until he was in his right mind again took an immediate backseat to the revelation (belated, offhand, "oh by the way" - and fuck you kindly for that, anyway; why the hell couldn't they wait for him to muster the courage to _ask_ first?) that Nakatomi Trading was picking up the tab; you're welcome; just sign here and here and initial every paragraph. It all seemed too good to be true, which of course meant Matt refused to question it, at least not until he was reasonably sure that the drug-fog had receded enough that he could be reasonably certain he wasn't just imagining it.

Which was also when he learned that her 'they' also included his doctors, and the 'everything' he wasn't supposed to be worrying about included his recovery, too, or at least the 'paying for it' part - and _holy shit!_ It took him longer than it probably should have to get head-on with the concept, drugs or no drugs, because shit like that does _not_ happen. Not to him. Not to real people who lived in the real world (who had fucking real-world knowledge of the way the health industry worked, and _fuck_ but why couldn't cyber-terrorism have been a thing back when his mom got sick?) but when it finally sunk in that Ms. Genaro was serious Matt just shut his trap and stuck to being shamelessly grateful, because his doctors kept tossing out words like "rehab" and "physiotherapy" and "additional surgery" and thoughts of his probable future scared the shit out of him whenever they wandered by, and– 

- _How the hell was this his life?_

Seriously, what the fuck was up with his karmic balance that impossibly good things like free health and legal coverage just fell into his lap while his head couldn't stop debating between "maybe having a permanent a limp" and "maybe never seeing the outside of a deep, dark, and undisclosed government hole" as the worst of all possible fates? And - since his brain refused to leave it alone, anyway - why the hell shouldn't he wonder at how this latest craziness was the direct result of - of whatever the fuck all he'd just lived through? Since he seemed to be doing that a lot.

Or what he and _McClane_ had just lived through, really, which was the other half of Matt's problem. That and how the God's honest worst two days of Matt's life apparently added up to old hat for the bastard (and he still needed some quality time with Google on that score), because it just made the fact he hadn't seen McClane even once since they'd been split up in the ER all the worse for him. There was just _so much_ Matt wanted to ask him, now that he'd way too much time to think about it, and the longer he had to wait the more that need pressed down on him, made his stay in hospital even more suffocating than it should have been.

Matt had worried about him, back when he'd first been drifting in and out of consciousness, flying high on painkillers and with his memory so full of holes it wouldn't hold water, and several times they'd had to pump him full of ativan before he'd rest quietly again - because every time he closed his eyes he saw Gabrial waving a gun at Lucy's head, or McClane falling down an elevator shaft, or Gabriel's henchman getting blown away by the gun in Matt's own hand – and he's pretty sure that part of the delegation of Suits that had descended earlier had been the psych detail, sent to determine if he was a risk for going postal and/or strangling himself with his own IV. (Or whether or not he'd ever be competent enough to stand trail, but Matt was studiously not-thinking about that.) 

But through it all he never forgot that McClane had been shot – _twice!_ – and got the shit kicked out of him umpteen times, besides, so _of course_ Matt had worried. Seriously, who wouldn't have? 

It was Lucy who'd finally told him that her dad was sleeping off the mother of all concussions, but – barring that and the whole _host_ of complications that could go with it – he was supposed to be mostly okay, and Matt had relaxed some for hearing it. Only some though; he was still nursing a deep, instinctual monkey-mind insistence that he needed to actually _see_ McClane with his own two eyes before he could give up his worry completely. 

But all of Lucy's reassurances dried up when he'd heard from _Bowman_ , of all people, that McClane had already been discharged, his hero-cop ass shuttled on back to New York on the federal dime – and the cocksucker hadn't even stuck his head through Matt's door to say goodbye.

Matt could have dealt with that, he _could have_ , if it didn't look so painfully like McClane was avoiding him. He'd been graced with Bowman's presence more than once, both with and without his band of merry men (which he'd expected; he wasn't an idiot) and Lucy had been by more times than he could count, thanks to the drugs (which he _hadn't_ expected, but still; not an idiot; or at least not enough of one to ask why she was there when he was sober enough for her to notice the fact) before she'd flown back to California with her mother, and – just _what the fuck_ , already? He'd seen McClane's _ex_ more often than he'd seen the man himself, which wasn't hard even though he'd only seen Ms. Genaro the once, and - granted - New York to DC was a bit far for a visit, but was it really that hard to pick up the phone? Hell, the bastard never even bothered to send him a fucking _'get well' card_. And the longer it went on, the harder it was for Matt not to take it personally. 

So much so that by the time they transferred him out to the rehab hospital he'd mostly stopped trying. John fucking McClane could just go _fuck himself_. With his favorite big-ass handgun. Repeatedly and without lube - just see if he cared. 

That was Matt's mantra all through rehab as he learned to walk again: that John McClane could just go and fuck himself in wildly bizarre and excruciatingly painful ways, because Matt's knee hurt like fuck on wheels and every other dose of the oral hydrocodone they gave him to help manage the pain made a repeat appearance and bowing like clockwork before the Porcelain God did absolute wonders for his creativity.

But Matt endured it, tooth and claw, through wheelchairs to walkers to crutches and canes, because rehab was infinitely better than prison (and he had Lucy's mother to thank personally for every word of that sentence, Lucy who _did_ send him 'get well' cards, hilarious and raunchy and irreverent and the absolute highlight of his tenure there) and when he wasn't ready to die from hurting he was wishing that McClane had taken Gabriel up on the offer and just _shot him in the head_ back when, because he damned well remembered Gabriel taunting that he'd deleted McClane's pension and his 401k and – dammit! – _one_ of them should have walked away from everything clear and free and since it sure as hell wasn't Matthew Farrell then – _fuck_ – why not John McClane?

Maybe because John McClane was an _asshole_ who couldn't even be bothered with so much as a word in passing for the guy who saved his daughter's life? And no matter how much Matt tried he couldn't stop resenting the hell out of him for that, not even when he was too busy resenting his knee and his therapist and his fucking wheelchair and _his fucking Goddamn knee_ to think about much else - and what that most likely _said_ about him was something Matt really, _really_ didn't want to contemplate, least of all for why he couldn't help but let one John Fucking Rat-Bastard McClane take up so much space inside his head that he barely found room in there for anything else. Certainly not for anything useful, like what the fuck all he was going to _do_ with himself when ( _if?_ ) he finally got out of there.

By the time Matt hobbled out of rehab he'd spent so long diligently and aggressively not-thinking about why he thought so much about John McClane that he figured he was due for a completely different school of therapy, but he hobbled out on his own two feet, or at least on an innocuous pair of crutches, and so what if his giant "fuck you!" to the world was more than half in McClane's direction? He had a handful of prescriptions in his pocket and a list of numbers in his head for scheduling his follow-up appointments (still on Nakatomi's dime, which was the only reason he wasn't actively complaining) and by then he'd fucking Goddamned _earned it_. 

(The crutches were his to keep until he graduated to a pair of painfully familiar orthopedic canes, and he had more fucking PT to look forward to from now until _the end of time_ , or at least until the ruins of his kneecap healed enough and the surrounding muscles and tendons strengthened enough that maybe he could shuffle around with no more than an awkward limp. Maybe. If he busted his ass and obeyed his therapists, but Matt wasn't exactly going to hold his breath on that one. And not-thinking about John McClane was easier than not-thinking about the rest of it.) 

Of course, because he'd pretty much given up on John _Vanishing Act_ McClane suddenly remembering that hey, ya know, he didn't save the world all by his lonesome that day and his geeky sidekick was still alive if not-quite-kicking (and maybe having a rough go of it, these days) and he'd made his peace with the revelation that _no_ , actually, he _didn't_ need another remote-yet-volatile jackass of a male authority figure to waste valuable emotional hit points on, thank you very much, the absolute ass-fucking bastard just _had_ to pull up to the rehab center's front entrance in a four-dour _yacht_ of a luxury sedan, just as Matt was starting to debate whether or not he should grab a bench while waiting for his cab or if he should go on standing (on his good leg) just for spite, because - fuck you, Matt Farrell, that's why. 

He spent all of four seconds wondering if he'd ever be be allowed to resign his position as irony's bitch before hobbling his crutch-tastic way over to the curb. 

"And I suppose the lesson here is not to trust Brazilian transgender nurses when they offer to call you a cab." Somehow he managed to refrain from cursing McClane out the second the driver's window rolled down. He was (rather pathetically) proud of himself for that. 

McClane might have smiled, but to Matt it looked more like a funny little tight-lipped grimace. "Just get in the car."

Matt felt his eyebrows creep into his hairline, but nevertheless he hopped around to the passenger side. The rear door unlocked just as he reached for the handle - helpful, McClane - so he could toss his crutches across the back seat. And he didn't slam the door (he was a grown-up, thanks; no matter what McClane thought) but when he turned around again McClane was there, pulling the front door opened for him. 

"Thanks," Matt said, because it sounded a lot better than 'what the hell, man?' - or any of its considerably more rude and explicit variants, for that matter - and climbed into the car.

"You get the radio til we hit the Jersey Turnpike," McClane informed him as he shifted into gear. Matt hadn't even fastened his seat-belt yet.

He spared a moment to wonder if the elevator hadn't left him in the lobby of the fucking _Twilight Zone_ , because – just _what the flying fuck_ , already? But what he said was: "yeah? And then what?" because at least the words were civil, even if the tone was maybe pushing it a little.

He still hadn't fastened his seat-belt.

"And then hopefully you'll be asleep so you won't bitch at me when I change it." And McClane sounded so matter-of-fact that Matt just wanted to _hit him_ , because now the bastard was acting like the McClane he knew, like the McClane who'd made a career out of saving Matt's life, bitching all the way – and he had _no right_ to act like that, like the McClane who maybe kinda sorta might have been his friend, not after fucking abandoning him to the tender mercies of GWU (and all its assorted outpatient facilities) for forty-nine days running, not after leaving him to face the feds and the lawyers and the doctors and the surgeons and the therapists and the rather sobering probability that he'd likely never walk right again, all on his own, when he really could have used a kind word from the one guy who could honestly say he'd been there before. (Or at least most of the way there. McClane was like the fucking Terminator or some shit. It really wasn't fair.) 

But Matt knew he was being (was _always_ being) selfish, knew that John McClane really didn't owe him a damned thing, because he'd saved Matt's life so many times that they'd likely both lost count but then Matt had helped him to save Lucy and so maybe that meant McClane figured they were even (and maybe he had the right of it). And whatever had happened after, or rather for everything that _hadn't_ happened, in the hospital and then later, McClane was here, now, instead of the cab he'd ordered, and the unholy beast of a Lincoln Towncar was big and roomy and came with heated leather seats and tinted windows and – oh, hey! Satellite radio! – and it was a fucking long ride to Camden any way you sliced it so he might as well be comfortable. And comfortable meant keeping all the mean things he couldn't help but think ( _really_ couldn't; by now he'd had lots of practice) safely locked behind his teeth. And, you know, not hitting the driver.

Whatever else he thought about McClane, Matt could recognize an olive branch when one rolled up to him with all the bells and whistles - and ordered him to get inside. He clicked his seat-belt, finally, which drew McClane's eyes to him for a moment before they flicked back to the road. When he tuned into some indie rock station McClane kept his mouth shut, which left him half tempted to find the most obnoxious rap station or one that played the twangiest country, just to see how far he could push things, but - why should they both suffer? The indie rock, at least, was fairly easy listening, no matter that he only knew maybe one song in five. Eventually the quiet between them stretched out into something far more comfortable than it should have been, given the decidedly _un_ comfortable whir of Matt's thoughts in the background and the stony, unchanging expression on McClane's face that he couldn't even begin to decipher - but nothing else about his life made sense right now, really. Why should this be any different?

He was asleep before they'd hit Delaware. 

When Matt woke up again it was dark outside, and distant city lights were streaming passed his window. True to form, McClane had switched the radio over to classic rock, but it was playing so softly that it might as well have been background noise. Matt blinked, saw signs for route 278, and blinked again. 

"Uh, I think you missed the exit. Like, seriously missed it – and where the hell are we, anyway?" 

"Just relax," McClane told him, that half-patient tone and the studied grimace Matt remembered so well from their previous road trip. "We'll be there soon."

"Yeah? And where is 'there' exactly? Because this does _not_ look like Camden to me." 

At that McClane's grimace pulled down into an outright scowl, and his fingers flexed around the steering wheel. Matt half expected the car to start speeding up, but either McClane managed to avoid clenching his driving leg, too, or they were flying by on cruise control. 

"C'mon man, I'm not your criminal or witness or whatever the heck I was to you before, and I'm pretty sure there are laws against kidnapping."

McClane very nearly smiled, or at least there was definite amusement in the subtle twitch of his lips. "Actually, you're both right now, and you're the one that got in the car."

"Yeah, bullshit – and what do you mean, I'm both?"

"It means that you helped write the code that Gabriel used to fuck with us, which makes you an accessory, but the feds decided not to pursue charges against you in light of your more recent services to the state, which would have made you a federal witness if the jerkoff had lived long enough to stand trial." McClane shifted back in his seat, his entire posture relaxing again – _smug bastard_ , Matt thought, the urge to just off and _hit the man_ returning in force. 

"And, you're still the one that got in the car."

Matt was deeply unimpressed. "Yeah, well, if you'll just pull over I can be the one to get _out_ of the car. I've had enough of being kidnapped for one lifetime, thanks."

"Would you relax, already?" McClane sounded annoyed. Well, more annoyed than usual. "I said we're almost there."

"And I said to pull the fuck over already, but we don't seem to be listening to each other, here." 

McClane's grip tightened around the steering wheel like he wanted nothing more than to strangle the damn thing, and Matt knew an odd moment of empathy, given that _he_ wanted nothing more than to strangle McClane. 

"Yeah and just what the hell are you going to _do_ if I pull over, eh kid? You gonna hobble along the side of the highway with your thumb sticking out, or what?"

"You know, I just might. I've been told that cripples get lots of sympathy." And Matt was as serious as he was sarcastic as he was bitter, but then thinking about his knee was enough to remind him that he hadn't taken anything for it in over six hours and on top of that he'd been too long in the same position – and then he was biting his lip and hanging onto the arm rest for dear life so as to physically stop himself from clutching at the still-tender scar tissue as a snarling, angry beast awoke behind it and tried to claw its own way out. 

Through the red haze of pain he could have sworn he'd heard McClane curse, but either his voice was soft enough or the rushing in Matt's ears was loud enough that he couldn't be sure. "You need your meds, kid? I got 'em here."

Matt heard the unmistakable rattle of pills shaking around in one of those amber prescription bottles, and he might have wondered when the hell McClane had gotten them filled except that right then he was too busy trying to fight down the reflexive spike of nausea at the very thought of mixing Vicodin with a moving vehicle. "Nuh-uh. Bad idea."

"There's water bottles in the back, too."

Matt shook his head as much as he dared. "Gonna be sick." 

He'd meant of course that taking the pills would _make_ him sick, but in hindsight it was easy to see how McClane could have misinterpreted that. Of course, the way he'd blanched chalk-white beneath a sheen of manly sweat probably hadn't helped his cause any. But the next thing he knew McClane had flipped on the turn signal and they were pulling off onto the breakdown lane, and – _oh, God_ \- Matt really _was_ going to be sick, because he'd been flippant with McClane when perhaps he shouldn't have and now the bastard about to take him at his word and leave him stranded alone right there on the side of the highway. 

Matt felt the car roll to a stop, heard the soft _SHUNK_ that was the automatic locks disengaging, and if once he would have sworn that there was no way in hell that McClane would ever have done this, well then that was before McClane had stranded him in DC without any sort of acknowledgement of the fact that saving Lucy had left him with a shattered kneecap and more blood on his hands than he'd ever accredited in the light of day, and right then his only hope was to maybe get the words out before either he threw up or McClane forced him out of the car.

"Well, kid?"

Matt felt the bile rise in the back of his throat (because - _Oh, God, this is really happening, McClane's really going to-_ ) and for a moment that took the spotlight away from the roaring fire that was the four separate states of his kneecap conducting their own little war for independence all up and down his leg. He tried to speak, felt the nausea spike as he opened his mouth, closed his eyes and groaned instead. Then before he could try again the sharp slam of a door startled his attention up and out of his own agony and dropped it straight back down into the car seat again, just in time for him to realize that McClane was suddenly and inexplicably _gone_. 

Distracted for the moment with his startled surveillance of the empty driver's side, Matt hadn't quite realized that he'd shifted over to lean against his own door until suddenly it was wrenched away from him. He tumbled at bit, at least as far as the slack of his seat-belt would allow, and then there were hands – strong hands – gripping his shoulders in warmth and faint tremors - and then McClane's voice was somewhere above him, cursing again and ordering him to _breathe, damn it!_

Matt shook his head, trying to convey that he was fine, or at least fine enough, but then he realized that it wasn't _McClane's_ hands that were shaking and – shit, fuck – this was absolutely the _last fucking thing_ he needed right now. He shook his head again, more forcefully this time. 

"Oh, man, I'm sorry. I—" but that was as far as he got before he was suddenly tossing the rest of his long-ago lunch all over McClane's faded Nikes.

"Jesus, kid." But McClane didn't sound mad, not exactly, and Matt figured he could work with that – except that now his teeth were chattering and the sudden warmth of McClane's hand encircling his wrist clued him into how cold he felt. "Breathe." And yeah, okay, Matt figured that was good, too: breathing. He could do that. Maybe.

Fuck.

"Inhaler," he wheezed, felt it shoved into his hand a half-second later, felt McClane guide that hand up to his face and practically shove the damn thing in his mouth before he managed to gain control of his arms again. Exercise-induced asthma. Wonderful. Fucking _lagniappe_. And now the evening was complete. Matt heard an odd staccato rasp, realized it was the sound of his own asthmatic laughter, and for some reason that just made it all the funnier. And then McClane was swearing at him again and _that_ was funny, too.

Or at least it was until McClane _slapped him_ , not all that hard but still hard enough to count - what the absolute fuck? One solid strike, open-handed, and then suddenly Matt's left cheek was stinging and it was like he'd somehow gone away a little, because now he felt a bit like he'd just _come back_. It was disconcerting, to say the least, like waking up to realize that you actually hadn't been sleeping. 

Matt blinked, startled, and rubbed at the side of his face. "Ow."

"Damn straight," McClane grumbled, and to Matt he looked a little frayed around the edges, himself. "You with me now, kid?"

Matt nodded, coughed a little, and puffed on the inhaler again. "That... wasn't fun," he managed once he'd found his breath again.

"Yeah, well, you think you can hold it together a bit longer? Our exit's coming up and all things considered I'd rather not do that again." 

"That depends. You mind telling me where we're going, this time?"

Matt didn't know whether or not he was surprised when McClane just grit his teeth and looked away. But to his credit he did answer the question. "Brooklyn."

Matt laughed again, sudden and sharp and tinged with the clear notes of hysteria. He really was irony's bitch, complete with a cute little spiked collar and a very short leash. "Brooklyn," he cackled. "Of course." 

"Here." And then suddenly McClane was shoving a pill bottle into his hands. "It's an anti-emetic. Take that with the hydrocodone and _please_ – for fuck's sake – just _pass out_ for the rest of the trip." And McClane was taking him home. Not to his home, which had been shot to death and then blown up, or even to the cut-rate hotel he'd already booked (and thank God his bank account had been unfrozen) to cover the gap between genuine homelessness and someone's couch to crash on, but to _McClane's_ home, which was all the way in Brooklyn – and why the hell the bastard had ignored him the whole time he was in hospital only to turn around and then pull _this shit_ -

Matt didn't understand. And at this point, he wasn't even sure if he _wanted to_.

No. Scratch that. He wanted to. Like, seriously wanted. McClane fucking owed him a few explanations and Matt was determined to collect. After all, now it rather looked like he'd have plenty of time. 

And if he was suddenly blinking back tears, well he was exhausted and sick to his stomach and in more pain than should even be possible without the presence of an actual gaping wound. And if McClane noticed, well, all he did was pass Matt a bottle of Poland Springs.

"Just take the fucking pills already." 

"Yeah..." Matt sighed, exhausted. "I – yeah."

He didn't quite manage to pass out though. The Vicodin tamed the pain and the Compazine kicked back the nausea, and after that Matt sort of drifted, neither asleep nor awake. Loose and not-quite-dreaming, Matt caught himself marveling at the oddly knotted pit of warmth in the center of his chest, and how it ever-so-slowly stretched out along his drug-deadened nerves and soothed them in a way he wasn't quite sure how to name.

Before Matt knew it, McClane was helping him to stumble out of the car again, this time onto a postage-stamp driveway. Brooklyn was _dark_ , he decided irreverently, as McClane shoved a crutch under one arm and slung Matt's other one across his own shoulders. 

"Streetlight's out," McClane announced, as though he'd read Matt's bemused expression and so somehow read his mind. Or more likely, Matt had simply spoken his thoughts aloud. Then together they managed to stumble a few steps, McClane mostly dragging Matt along as he couldn't seem to coordinate his feet.

"C'mon, kid. It's not like I can carry you, here." 

Matt giggled, a sound known only to the very high or the very sleep deprived. The sudden image of McClane scooping him up into those big strong cop-arms and marching him across the threshold demanded nothing less.

"Dammit, Farrell! Move your goddamn feet."

And – oh yeah, McClane had taken two rounds to the shoulder to cap off their little misadventure, and having to support all of Matt's weight probably wasn't helping it any. He did his best to hobble along, his weight balanced between one unsteady crutch, one rather shaky leg, and an oddly listing police officer. He had to lean precariously against the side of the house while McClane undid the lock – or _locks_ , pleural, and since Matt was sort of resigned to never calling anyone 'paranoid' ever again he decided to forgo the witty comment. 

McClane led him into the tiny mudroom of an entryway and then through what was probably the kitchen, not that Matt could really tell in the semi-dark, but he could have sworn he saw the shadowy outline of a table over against the far wall, there. He'd thought it odd that McClane hadn't bothered to turn on any lights, but given that he had his work cut out for him in simply shuffling along he didn't spare the energy to ask. 

McClane eventually deposited him on a futon in what was probably the living room, because at first Matt had thought it was a couch but then the back of it suddenly gave way and then before he knew it there was a pillow shoved beneath his head and a thick fleecy blanket draped over the rest of him – and did he pull his own feet up, or did McClane? Had to have been McClane, because Matt was sure he would have remembered removing his own shoes, and now he was laid out flat and warm in socks and his own gross sweats and he had the sudden, almost violent urge to _brush his teeth_ \- but McClane was turning away again.

"Hey," he called out, his voice sounding far-off in his own ears, and then one of the indistinctly lumpy shadows turned back. McClane's face was suddenly caught in the faint light of a distant moonbeam, his expression a muted study in silver and shadow. 

"Yeah, kid?" McClane's voice was rough, gravelly like, and to Matt he sounded tired. Not sleepless tired, but worn-out tired, and suddenly Matt felt guilty for everything he'd been thinking earlier. He sat up again, or at least shoved up onto one elbow. 

"Ah, I'm sorry about – that. Earlier. It's just – I've been a head-case, lately, and..." A useless hand came up in an equally useless gesture, as though he expected McClane to be able to read his meaning in the space between them. "Sorry."

His apology, genuine thought it had been, earned him what looked to be the ghost of a smile, but there wasn't much amusement in it all and McClane's eyes skittered away from his.

"Don't worry about it," he dismissed. "Panic attacks are just part of the territory."

Matt blinked. Was that what that was? He really would like to skip them in the future, thanks. 

"Territory...?"

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder," McClane recited, a razor's edge of bitterness biting into the words. Matt just stared at him, startled by the tone, even more startled by the realization – _familiarity breeds contempt_ , the random quote popping into his head unbidden.

McClane rolled his eyes at Matt's stunning deer-in-the-headlights impression. "PTSD? Don't tell me they didn't warn you..."

Matt shook his head. "No. Or rather, yes to them sending the shrinks in, but then no to that being what I meant." Matt sighed, fully aware that he was probably making less sense than usual and that McClane's patience for incoherent babbling (or rather, for _what registered to McClane_ as incoherent babbling) was spotty at the best of times. He dragged his free hand through his hair, massaging at his scalp a bit as though his fingers could somehow magically pull his thoughts up and out of his brain through some sort of osmosis. 

"I... I mean – I'm not—" Matt sighed again, this time the sound twisting into a half-strangled growl of frustration. 

"I said, don't worry about it." McClane was firm, for all he grimaced as he said the words. He brought a hand up to rub at the back of his neck, and if McClane was still reluctant to meet Matt's eyes, well then that just meant that Matt got a good look at the man in profile. The anemic lighting highlighted all the fine lines that mapped McClane's face, laugh lines and frown lines and worry lines and those little crinkles around his eyes, and sure Matt had noticed them before, but now they seemed deeper set somehow. 

McClane looked _old_ , Matt suddenly realized, and for some reason that bothered him. Sure McClane was old – he listed to CCR for chrissakes – but then again, he wasn't. It was no old man that turned into the fucking _MacGyver_ of blowing shit up, or that had saved Matt's life a dozen times in four different states. No, Matt decided, McClane wasn't old, and age had nothing to do with it. 

"Thank you," Matt blurted, because saying so had suddenly felt terribly important. 

McClane shrugged, his eyes passing over Matt from head to toe in one swift cop-sense assessment, the motion so casual that it almost felt rehearsed. Or habit. "Just part of the territory," he said again, the words coming like some sort of inside joke, and Matt had a minor epiphany that he knew what McClane had meant: that Matt needed someone and in the absence of qualified others McClane had stepped up to the plate himself, that the job had fallen to McClane by default because he was there and quasi-qualified. That McClane – still, _again_ – was just being 'that guy.' 

"I know," Matt said, eyes wide and adamant as he tried to pack all the meaning he could into those two little words. "And _thank you_."

McClane's expression warmed a bit as the grimace softened into a smile. A real smile this time and not the half-hearted dregs of one, even if it still was barely there and then gone again. 

"Get some sleep," McClane ordered him. "Cuz I'm waking you bright and early for the nickel tour."

Matt couldn't help the laugh, but then he also knew that McClane was serious and so he finally bedded down again, curling into the fleece blanket even as he heard McClane's heavy footsteps trailing away. "Night!"

The footsteps paused. 

"Good night, kid." 

Matt smiled down into his pillow, all warm and tingly from the drugs and the fleece and the nice ten-inch futon mattress that felt softer than his bed in Camden, and finally – for the first time since the Fourth of July – managed to sleep without dreaming. 

 


End file.
